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U of G to Offer Bioinformatics Graduate, Diploma Programs
New offerings to meet growing need for informatics experts to crunch life sciences data
BY ANDEW VOWLES
More accurate base calling sounds like a job for an umpire. But at U of G, it’s a data-crunching task that now brings together biologists, computing scientists and mathematicians — and it helps explain why Guelph will launch new graduate bioinformatics programs in the fall.
Two new master’s programs and a graduate diploma in bioinformatics will equip students to handle a rising tide of data generated in biology labs at Guelph and around the world, says Prof. Stefan Kremer, Computing and Information Science (CIS).
Beginning in September, Guelph will offer an M.Sc. in bioinformatics and a master of bioinformatics, as well as a diploma program for working professionals. Bioinformatics involves using computing, math and statistics tools to make sense of biological data.
The programs will address a growing need for informatics experts to analyze reams of data from scientists studying genetics, proteins and other information-dense topics, says Kremer.
“So much is changing the way biology is being done. The rate at which data can be captured and analyzed is phenomenal.”
Guelph’s new programs will help students learn about computing tools and techniques for analyzing large amounts of data, he says. Biologists expect that information will help them in tackling genetic diseases, species conservation, crop science and other fields.
Organizers anticipate the programs will reach steady-state enrolment of about 30 students. They hope to attract applicants from both biology and informatics programs.
The M.Sc. degree will be thesis-based; the master of bioinformatics will involve courses and a project. Students will have co-supervisors from both informatics and biology. Eight core faculty members will take part from CIS and the departments of Mathematics and Statistics, Integrative Biology and Plant Agriculture.
Graduates might eventually work in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, research or health and medicine, says Kremer. Or they might end up helping to catalogue and ultimately preserve the world’s biodiversity, as in that “base-calling” project at the University’s Biodiversity Institute of Ontario (BIO).
There, sophisticated instruments read genetic material from numerous specimens of animals, plants and fungi for species identification under the institute’s DNA bar-coding initiative.
Sujeevan Ratnasingham, head of the BIO’s informatics group, hopes to be able to record genetic sequences from about 200,000 organisms a year. That involves instruments reading countless DNA chemical base pairs in order. Currently, about eight technicians then spend at least two hours a day proofreading the instruments’ work.
Multiply those numbers by numerous techs working at other DNA bar-coding sites worldwide under the International Barcode of Life project. Then add other labs reading gene sequences for varied uses, and you’ve got a small industry of people engaged in a fairly mind-numbing, error-prone task.
This spring, Ratnasingham tapped Kremer’s machine-learning expertise to help devise software to proofread bases. By late fall, the BIO scientist hopes to have a computer program to check DNA data automatically and predictably.
“This would free up a considerable amount of technicians’ time and allow them to focus on real research questions,” Ratnasingham says.
Confessing that biology was a bit of a nemesis in his own student years, Kremer says he views DNA as so much biological software. He considers his new project a perfect illustration of bioinformatics.
“The biologists have more data than they know what to do with, and I’ve got tools that are hungry for data.”
Within the past year, the BIO has hired two graduates from CIS and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics as software engineers: Michael De Ridder and Taika Von Konigslow.
Ratnasingham says Guelph’s new graduate programs will produce more potential employees for bar-coding projects in labs around the world.
“We’re in the emerging field of biodiversity informatics,” he says. “The new program is an opportunity to get new minds interested in the types of problems and challenges we face on a regular basis.”